Extended Blundering’s “Deflated Souffle” and “Humanize Me” turn found sounds into two different encounters with the world around them. The first began with recordings made while watching a marching band warm up before a Fourth of July parade, while the second came from bottles, cans, pipes, and other sounds gathered near railroad tracks. Rather than treating those recordings as background material, Extended Blundering builds the songs from whatever rhythms and melodies emerge once the sounds reach the studio.
Deflated Souffle
“Deflated Souffle” grows out of the contrast between the formal energy of a marching band and the fragments captured by a field recorder. The title gives that source material a strange physical image, suggesting something inflated and ceremonial losing its shape. What happens in the studio matters as much as the original recording: sounds collected from a specific place become the raw material for discovering a beat and melody that were not necessarily apparent at first.
That process gives the track an element of chance. The recording is not simply documenting the parade preparation, but becoming something else through editing, arrangement, and repetition. Extended Blundering’s approach keeps the boundary between environmental sound and musical composition deliberately loose, allowing an ordinary moment before a parade to become the starting point for a piece built from its acoustic details.
Humanize Me
“Humanize Me” takes its material from a much harsher environment. Bottles, cans, pipes, and industrial sounds were recorded near railroad tracks surrounded by graffiti, fences, barbed wire, and people trying to get through the day. The resulting feeling is not one of simple observation. The environment leaves behind a sense of dehumanization, while the track’s yearning quality introduces a small counterweight to it.
The rhythm follows that setting, with the pulse recalling a passing train and giving the song a physical sense of movement. Against it, the melancholy and slight hope in the music make the title more pointed. “Humanize Me” does not need to explain the people or surroundings it came from. It lets the collected sounds carry something of that place, turning an environment marked by separation and neglect into a piece that keeps searching for something more human.
